Ministry: Nation to resolutely safeguard sovereignty

Colored lights illuminate downtown Taipei in China's Taiwan, on March 28, 2017. (Photo/Xinhua)

Beijing vowed to take resolute and strong measures to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity after a group of Japanese lawmakers led by Keiji Furuya of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party visited the Taiwan region and met with the island's leader Tsai Ing-wen on Tuesday.

Furuya's trip interfered in China's internal affairs, violated the one-China principle and the spirit of the four China-Japan political documents and sent a seriously wrong signal to the "Taiwan independence" separatist forces, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.

"China strongly condemns such an egregious move," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said that the Japanese government connived at the political manipulation by individual Japanese politicians for their selfish political gains despite the fact that Japan, which once kept Taiwan under its colonial rule for half a century, is historically responsible for its serious wrongdoing to the Chinese people.

However, such behavior of reneging on one's commitment with sinister intentions is doomed to fail and will not stop the historic process of China's complete reunification, the spokesperson said.

"We urge the Japanese side to stop making provocations or stirring up trouble on the Taiwan question, not to seek selfish gains in the Taiwan Straits and to avoid going further down the wrong path," the spokesperson added.

Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, warned Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party authorities on Tuesday that their attempt to seek "independence" by colluding with foreign forces is doomed to fail.

In a statement issued on Monday, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson criticized the trip of Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, urging the United States to stop all forms of official interactions with the Taiwan region.

The spokesperson stressed that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and the Taiwan question has always been the most important and the most sensitive issue at the heart of China-U.S. relations.

"The Chinese side firmly opposes official U.S. exchanges with the Taiwan region in any form and under any name. We urge relevant parties in the U.S. to abide by the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiques," the spokesperson said.

Earlier this month, two high-profile visits to the Taiwan region by U.S. lawmakers, including that of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were strongly opposed by Beijing with a series of countermeasures and days of military drills around the island.